How You Should Wipe a Hard Drive: Shoot It with an Elephant Gun [VIDEO]

If you want to make sure that no one can recover data from a computer hard drive, shooting it with an elephant gun is a fun and effective option.

A determined thief can recover data from a discarded computer hard drive, even after it has been erased. Whenever you discard an old computer, you must physically destroy the hard drive in order to prevent this from happening.

The most common way to wipe an old computer hard drive is to remove it from the computer and drill a few holes in it. This will work…but shooting it is a lot more fun and accomplishes the same goal.

Check out what an AR-15 and an elephant gun chambered in 9.3x62mm Mauser did to this hard drive.

I don’t think anyone will be able to recover any data off that computer hard drive.

The two shots from the AR-15 were both 55gr Hornady V-Max bullets. The shot from the 9.3x62mm Mauser was a 258gr RWS H-Mantel bullet.

As far as elephant guns go, the 9.3x62mm Mauser is on the light end of the spectrum and cannot hold a candle to a larger elephant gun, like a .577 Nitro or a massive 8 bore elephant gun. However, as you can see, the 9.3x62mm Mauser was still absolutely devastating to the computer hard drive.

Like what you see here? You can read more great hunting articles by John McAdams on his hunting blog. Follow him on Twitter @TheBigGameHunt.